Posts by Terry 6 5611 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Jul 2009
No they can't. Because they can only leave if they can get better elsewhere. And that means both conditions and pay, not a trade off between the two if you are already near the bottom anyway.Least of all if there is no certainty of a new job. Especially not in the USA where there is no entitlement to free medical treatment.
And not just hard to find and niche items. Sometimes simple, inexpensive items that are unique to Amazon, even though they are obvious things for someone to produce. Or are only available outside Amazon at stupid prices because those suppliers are asking ridiculous mark-ups Presumably because in Amazon the makers have a market place. The brackets that hold my VM hub onto the wall are simple, effective, unobtrusive and inexpensive. I couldn't find anything elsewhere that was any of those things. The casting resin I wanted to buy was ridiculously expensive through hobbyists' suppliers, but on Amazon there were dozens of inexpensive suppliers. One positive thing that internet selling (not just Amazon of course) has done is to remove form the UK one malaise that used to drive me mad, a decade or two ago: Old fashioned bosses of small companies were unable to distinguish between profit margins and earnings. They'd rather have sold 100 of an item at 60% markup than 1000 at 30% markup.
A favourite example of this was at the start of the computer age. The PC market in the UK was slow to take off, compared to the USA. So US manufacturing companies sold machines to UK resellers at significantly lower prices. The idea was that the UK resellers would reduce retail prices and increase the volume of sales. Instead the UK resellers kept prices/sales volumes at the same level. Pocketed the extra profit .
Maybe my specs are even more rose tinted. But I remember the times when the MD was someone who knew the business. Had been an engineer or a Personnel (not "HR") manager or even a sales manager, then become an executive and rose to become an MD by demonstrating acumen. As opposed to an accountant or MBA fast-tracked to the top and lauded for his/her ability to make fast profits over the short term, to raise the value of shares within short term investment cycles.
Companies are managed by and on behalf of beancounters.
Just as lawyers make money for lawyers, so do beancounters make money for beancounters.
And they do it in a self-righteous way because they are trained to think only of the bottom line.
Q)What's the difference between an accountant and a computer?
A) A computer has feelings.
I get this with Gmail. I've had a firstname.surname@ address since the days of invitations to join. A vintage Gmail address.
Some stupid b in the USA used to give it out as hers. God knows why (though we share a name and she uses the male spelling of "Terry" not "Terri")
So I used to get lots of emails about dress fitting, Lady's tennis lessons, dinner menus and so forth.
At first I used to politely but firmly inform the sender that I was several thousand miles away, on a different continent and male. But as time wore on I got more and more fed up with this and my replies got less and less polite. Eventually I became incredibly rude, or told the sender to cancel my membership and so forth, without bothering to say their email was obviously meant for someone else. The embarrassment seems to have stopped her. I seldom get any now.
I am getting a lot of Spam from version of that address. Gmail isn't case sensitive and ignores the dot. It comes from Firstnamesurname@gmail.com No dot or second capital. All the spam comes from just that one version. So they've scraped it from somewhere. And the idiots who pay them for that kind of message get as much for their money as they deserve.
Often comments to questions that are absolutely nothing to do with the solution.
My favourite version of this is when the response is all about some ( trivially overlapping at most)issue that is in an entirely different and highly specific context.
i.e You may ask for help because, say, there's a white rectangle that keeps appearing on your desktop.
Someone will then post a response about how their screen turned completely white after they'd installed <named niche programme>. Ignoring the fact that you didn't say that your screen has turned white or that you'd installed this programme.
Erm. We don't brandish our Social Security numbers in the UK. It would be unthinkable for anyone other than a government agency to request such. And most citizens would need to hunt for theirs.Lots of other parts of the world don't even have anything of that sort. The mobile phone networks seems to work OK without it.
The implication seems to be ( reflecting on MS adverting from a few years back,) is that users are only expected to use, or want to use, a small handful of programmes.(MS Office and a couple of the other usual suspects like Photoshop). So all they need to be able to do is select their usual tools, day in day out. Or maybe the latest game or two of an evening. i.e. no need to be able to locate a whole range of programmes, differing daily. I'm guessing that what Microsoft wants is that you click Start, and use one of the Big Brand software suites that you obtained from their "Store" on a monthly licence.
Which is probably true if you're a middle manager/lawyer/anyone else who only has one kind of task.
However, it's bloody useless if you are, say, creating a sequence of lesson plans one minute, designing a lesson the next, then creating materials for the lesson and probably writing a report in the evening. With maybe some postgraduate study materials at the weekend. Or managing a team of speech therapists, then planning your own interventions, then preparing for a multi-disciplinary team meeting. Or running a Scout/Guides troupe, with accounts to keep, risk assessments to perform, and activities to prepare etc. Or a final year student with a complex dissertation to complete.
Each of these may need a whole different bunch of programmes, which vary from day to day or month to month. Programmes which may only be used once or twice a year. That may be quite niche, or task specific. Or that are tested, used or discarded according to need. All the above describe the work of myself and my family members. And there are a squillion other examples out there I'm sure.
But that's not what/who Microsoft care about anymore. Maybe it's been working towards that for a long time. I was always surprised by the omission of Publisher from the Office packages that most needed it (e.g. home users, members of voluntary groups etc. who would need to create the odd leaflet, that sort of thing). Almost like they wanted to restrict private users to the most basic of functionality so that they could use it at work, and then sell the big software packages to corporate employers).
...anything that effects ease of use or functionality is another matter.
It's already become a struggle in Win 10 to keep the Start menu organised. The MS focus seems to be to turn Start into a kind of billboard instead of neatly organised Start folders with just the link to the programme you need, organised according to function (e.g. Graphics/Office/utilities) rather than the weird and wonderful names that the publishers give to their products ( and themselves) .Microsoft seem to have a fetish for forcing this mess upon us, completw with the stupid <product name> on the web links. The aim is clearly to help software houses to try to push us to buy some more of the same.
I'm afraid your argument relies of false equivalence. For ordinary users the choice of an OS unlike a pet, is not a hobby. Indeed, for most it's a total chore. If they wish to escape from the malevolence of Microsoft they need an alternative, not a playground. In essence the "what distro should I use" question is actually "What can I use that's not Microsoft but lets me do the job just as easily as I can do now?"
A better analogy might be choosing a Christmas tree. It's a bloody sight easier to go to "Pinz and Needles" and choose one of what's offered than to go out into a tree farm, select your sapling from along the hundreds of rows and chop it down yourself.
Bullshit!
"go and change it yourself," Almost nobody on the planet is a software developer. It's a specific profession ( or highly specialist hobby).
"if there is no developer interest in an area to do it himself, it won't get done." Err, that's nothing like capitalism. In Capitalism people pay other people to do stuff. What it sound like, actually, is William Morris style Utopian Socialism. in which stuff gets done because people do it for the love of doing it. And the same objections apply- someone has to do the boring/dirty jobs.
"Windows is like authoritarian China.". Err no. No one makes you stay within Microsoft's rule- as this article clearly demonstrates. Android/iOs and all the assortment of 'nux OSes are available to anyone. It's not Microsoft that holds them in- but if 'nux advocates want to welcome them across they need to be more competitive and err- welcoming
"but you cannot stray from how they intend.". Yeah. I'll give you that one. But then there are plenty of FOSS programmes that are exactly like that too. I've seen a forum for one such with a long list of comments from supportive users saying they'd like a certain small change, with good reasoned explanations why. And responses from the devs saying, in essence, "That's not how we want it it be"- which is their absolute right.- and at least it's a free product unlike MS Windows/Office. But it's not welcoming.
And with this ......"You got lucky this time as I had a minutes to spare, but next time make a tiny effort or you find other Linux users can swear worse than Linus used to."
....you learn all you need to know about the Linux community. And that's not that they are willing and helpful evangelists.
But if they do want Linux to become mainstream they need to be evangelists . And evangelists don't tell potential converts to fuck off and read a bible.
I used to think that. Now I think that swearing is a way tp punch through, sometimes- to give a certain level of high energy emphasis. If it's only used rarely .
There's that kind of swearing and the kind that is used in lieu of appropriate words, or like a kind of punctuation.
Precisely. Autism, in my training, was described as a triad of functional issues. Each one is part of its own spectrum. My daughter, who is actually qualified to diagnose ASD, had to do a separate course- over and above her standard Autism competency- for this.
I'm particularly aware of this when I ask for advice because I can't work out how to do something, and the guidance in the Help is deeply impenetrable, or can only be found in a forum by looking back through years of posts all sorts of probably unrelated issues on the off chance that it might be there.
Is it too much to ask that these self-proclaimed experts just give an answer? Or at least a link to the relevant one if it's been given fairly recently. Otherwise, why bother being on that forum? Is it to just flaunt their expertise without sharing it? It often seems so.
The article seems to be a mixture of name dropping and straw man arguments.
In real life I get the impression of Open Source developers who are more interested in their creations than in the people who use the software. I used to joke that schools would run so much better if we could just keep the kids out.
For some developers, and yes, not just open source, the same is true with regard to users. Wanting software to work in a way that makes sense to how the users work in real life seems far less important to them than implementing some feature that they are fond of. And when someone has the temerity to suggest that "It would be better if it went like...(this)" it upsets them. Who are we to criticise their baby? And you then see their snippy comments on line.Either arrogant ("That's how it got to be") or illogical ("we don't want to give priority to...<something>.)." when there appears to be no sensible reason why and they won't give an explanation if we, the users have missed some salient point.
Yes, as well as what kind of team,in what way they should work together, how different roles are fulfilled and interchanged,and so forth. i.e. all the real team building nitty gritty that these twat courses never actually touch upon ( but which organisational psychology covered in some detail when I was learning about that stuff).
This is an occupational hazard for teachers working with hearing impaired kids. You wear a radio mike that the kid(s) can hear in their hearing aides. But you do need to remember when to switch it off- or better remove it. Not just for toilet breaks- but also when you go to the staffroom for coffee and a chat at break times.
No. If you had reasonable warning you organise your day accordingly. What you are outlining is simply not how work places operate. Team work does mean working as part of that team, which includes reasonable team events. It's not being a "minion". And a single event is not controlling your life. It's not even controlling your work life. Sometimes you have to do group stuff.
Further, for most employees, having such events is, or should be, part of that pleasant work life. Maybe, though, you personally don't enjoy social activities ( in the workplace), and just have to grin and bear it.
Both seem very common. I've met plenty of each. To the point that it's a big pain in the arse getting complaints that I've spelt one such's name wrong. Even worse in these days of email addresses. Worse still if yo work with one or more of each. But there are plenty of other names that have varied spellings.
BASIC though was really built at a time when very few programmers were around. Pretty much everyone was a beginner or a white coated boffin. Even in 71 or so when I was taught programming at school most of it was in low-level numeric form. BASIC opened up programme writing to the masses. They were all beginners, almost by definition.
The NHS also has an enormous beauracratisation issue due to the mixture of internal markets and over-management. For example, clinicians already working ridiculously hard have to waste significant amount of time to record their activities, to prove they aren't, er, wasting time. Something that decent local team management could accomplish with considerably more efficiency.
This seems to be in every industry. Private or public.*
It has, I think, a number of roots, which include that the senior managers seem to believe;
1) If you're good at doing something you should be (good at) making sure other people do it well too.
2)That management is a higher calling to which you should be adopted
3)That the job you are doing is all the same for everyone no matter how good you are at it so there can't be too many grades within it
4)Your job costs enough as it is, without paying a horny handed oik like you even more money
5) If you re to be paid more for your contribution it must be because you are doing something new, different and superior.
*In schools you get whisked out of the classroom- the job you trained in and love doing, to sit in an office looking at or writing business strategy etc reports. In the NHS you get whisked out of doing clinical work, ditto. It is crazy. You spend j3 or 4-years training as some kind of therapeutic worker. You spend just four or five years doing what you chose to train for- and maybe dreamt of doing since childhood. Then they stick you in an office well away from any patients.
In educational contracts, like the ones I listed and others, and I know from these pages and chatting with people in other industries it's the same elsewhere, contracts are written and agreed by people who a) think that they know what the job/project/whatever entails, from a skeletal description and b) are convinced that it can't be as complex and/or costly as they've been told. At least part of this, I'm convinced, is that they are overpaid and underworked, so assume everyone else is, too.
This, of course, is not just IT contracts. Lowest bid school meals contracts seem to end up with the poor kids getting crap food, as the catering companies find ways to meet the obligations without actually giving the kids a decent meal (" nutritional standards" are not the same as "edible meals"). Educational support service lowest bid contracts end up replacing skilled and expert teachers with barely qualified pairs of hands that have had a 20 minute training course. No beancounter is going to retain these staff if they can get around it, or replace them with someone equivalent if they move on/retire. Cleaning contracts end up with the school looking filthy because a significant part of the work was implicit stuff that the cleaners used to just get on and do, but isn't specified in the letter of the contract. e.g. when Hoovering they'd get rid of the dust underneath the bookshelves, just past the edge the of the ((contracted) carpets. And so on. And of course the estimate for the time it takes to do various jobs is always 10% less ( and cheaper) than it it really is.
Ah. For once you can't blame the cleaners. Just the opposite. Someone decided to take over their socket. Someone who so lacked understanding of the building and the work that goes on there* that they both allowed this to happen and then failed to realise immediately. Someone who would appear to be totally oblivious of anything other than their own job.Which is not a recommendation for anything above the level of apprentice/PFY
*If someone has put a socket there it's quite likely that some other someone has a use for a socket there.
Yes. Two way switches can be up/down in and on/off according to who used them last and where. When you need to go upstairs, you press the downstairs switch, light on the floor above goes on. When it's sleepy time you press the upstairs switch. Light goes off. If you don't wake up too early (while it's still dark), the next time you make this journey the opposite opposite side of the switch will be ready to press. People manage with this, all the time. If the caller in this story did phone for help without simply pressing the switch and seeing if stuff works as required, then said user would have to be considerably more stupid than the norm- and not just in matters of tech.
If my understanding is correct, an algorithm still functions in a 1+1=10 way, like any other programme.So if there is a bias in the underlying sample measurements, which could be just be something as simple as language use, by the subject or the researcher , this could/would reflect in the comparative score values that are collected.
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